Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

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In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998. As discussed earlier, the unexpected orders of the pre-verbal adverbs and negation are the result of two NegPs, each one with tsy in its Spec. One of these NegPs is located above efa and the other is below mbola. The construction is in (52). (50) NegP 3 Spec Neg’ TsyP 2 Neg FP 2 Spec F’ EfaP 2 F FP 2 Spec F’ MbolaP 2 F NegP 2 Spec Neg’ TsyP 2 Neg FP In order to account for the necessity of having tsy in a sentence when either intsony or mihitsy are present, some sort of negative concord must exist by which the appearance of a negative element higher in the tree - tsy - allows or licenses the appearance of the lower negative adverbs intsony and mihitsy. Also, if the higher tsy appears, it must disallow the overt appearance of the lower tsy, and vice versa, so that two tsys do not co-occur. I do not go into the mechanisms here, leaving them to be specified in the future. 6.3 Adverb Phrases Movement is required in order to obtain the surface order of adverbs from Cinque’s underlying order. Departing slightly from Cinque, it appears that, in Malagasy, post-verbal AdvPs are the heads of Phrases and it is these phrases which raise around 14
In The Structure of Malagasy, Volume II , ed. Ileana Paul, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 1998. each other to higher Specs, creating the surface order from the underlying one. Adverbs in heads rather than in Specs actually may not be completely against Cinque, since he does allow that a given language may be able to choose whether its adverbs are in heads or in Specs. Malagasy appears to have both types. Making this head adjustment, the underlying tree (relevant portion only) is in (51). (51) MihitsyP 3 Spec Mihitsy’ 3 mihitsy IntsonyP 3 Spec Intsony’ 3 intsony FoanaP 3 Spec Foana’ 3 foana TanterakaP 3 Spec Tanteraka’ 3 tanteraka TsaraP 2 Spec Tsara’ 2 tsara VP The first move is TsaraP raising to the Spec of TanterakaP, which then raises to the Spec of FoanaP, which in turn raises to the Spec of IntsonyP, which finally raises to the Spec of MihitsyP, as in (52) 6 . (10) NegP 2 2 tsy mihitsyP 2 intsonyP i 2 2 mihitsy t i foanaP j2 2 intsony t j tanterakaP k2 2 foana t k tsaraP l 2 2 tanteraka t l VP 2 tsara t v “Tsy manasa tsara tanteraka foana intsony ny lamba mihitsy Rakoto.” 6 To get the possible variant order tanteraka> tsara, VP would move up to [Spec,TanterakaP], rather than to [Spec,TsaraP], and TanterakaP would then raise as usual, leaving TsaraP below. This may create a violation of cyclicity, since the object would have to raise and the VP would have to raise from below it to above it. Because of the nature of the object’s insertion, however, the process may somwhow be permissible. In addition to this, it seems it is another manifestation of the difficulty of having principled movement in Kayne’s system, and so the problem does not have an easy solution here. 15
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Malagasy Adverbs Andrea Rackowski McGill University August 1996

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